Yeah, this is getting kind of old.
The Republican all-scandal-all-the-time agenda is flopping. Benghazi has always been a nothingburger, and the IRS scandal
blowing up in Rep. Darrell Issa's face. Since Republicans don't think an NSA running wild with secret and probably unconstitutional interpretations of the law to spy on Americans is actually a scandal, they have to cook up something else. And what's a better target than
Obamacare? In this case, it's Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's work with Enroll America in soliciting funding from the industry and private organizations to fund public education efforts.
Republican lawmakers are demanding that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary fulfill a request for documents about her fundraising efforts on behalf of Enroll America.
In a letter to Sebelius, 28 GOP senators expressed suspicions about Enroll America, which was created to promote ObamaCare, and its ties to the administration. [...]
On Thursday, lawmakers criticized the HHS secretary for failing to answer "specific questions" about her efforts to raise money for the enrollment group.
"We urge HHS to immediately stop its solicitation for, and coordination with, Enroll America until these questions have been answered," the senators wrote.
Sebelius has had to solicit this funding, by the way, because the GOP House has steadfastly refused her requests for funding for the effort. The GOP's "questions" have all been answered already by the fact that the Public Health Services Act has a provision that
allows secretaries of HHS to do exactly what Sebelius has done: work with outside entities to raise money to promote government health programs. It was done under George W. Bush for the Medicare Part D program and under Clinton for the Childrens' Health Insurance Program.
And it was also done by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), one of Sebelius's most rabid critics. And when Alexander was doing it, as the first President Bush's education secretary, it wasn't even under the Public Health Services Act.
It's going to take a lot for Republicans to gin this up into a real scandal, but that's not going to stop them from continuing to try it.